When Russia first tried to steal Ukraine’s Donbas region by sending soldiers and armed gangs to take over government buildings and hold gunpoint elections, there was little that the Ukrainian military could do but send a few poorly paid, ill equipped and weakly manned army units. It was a bad time to be a Ukrainian soldier. Salaries were unpaid, theft of army supplies was rampant, and in a good year only about one in ten of the country’s combat brigades actually could take the field. In those days a Kyiv waitress earned more than a line officer.JOIN US ON TELEGRAMFollow our coverage of the war on the @Kyivpost_official. Things were so bad in Mariupol on May 9, 2014, that one junior Ukrainian mechanized infantry officer, confronted by separatist crowds and barricades blocking his tiny column from driving to the local city hall, had zero air power, artillery, support units or even tanks or mortars behind him. No one knew about drones. His chain of command didn’t seem to want to help. As the incident played out, that young Ukrainian army Major aged 31 decided he had few options but to order his driver to ram a BMP fighting vehicle into the roadblock at full speed. Russian content creators had been on hand and hoped to record government troops firing at “peaceful” civilians but there was no content. The Mariupol mayor’s office returned to government control and remained Ukrainian until Russia invaded a second time, in 2022. When that happened, most of Ukraine’s neighbors and allies said the Kremlin would demolish the Ukrainian army in days.